The university recently launched a crowdsourcing contest to identify projects that reduce campus emissions and highlight the potential for scaleable, educational solutions as a living laboratory. The challenge is part of a new series of contests launched by the MIT Climate CoLab, a crowdsourcing platform of over 50,000 members. The series seeks high-impact proposals that tackle major climate change challenges.

In an effort to decrease greenhouse gases and increase the efficiency of energy use, the university will receive its last coal shipment March 2016. After 160 years of relying on coal for electricity and heat, the university is transitioning to natural gas, in part, to help the university comply with the Environmental Protection Agency's National Enforcement Initiatives.

At the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Peter Fox-Penner and his team will focus on increasing energy research initiatives throughout the university, deepening connections among science, engineering and management scholars with policy makers and corporations, and advancing the curriculum at the university's schools and colleges. The institute’s three research focus areas are electric industry transformation, global climate change and smart, sustainable cities.

After months of dialog and negotiation, the student-led group Fossil Free MIT and MIT administrators have reached an agreement that has brought an end to the group’s sit-in, which began in October 2015. The agreement identifies four areas where campus stakeholders will work together: campus carbon neutrality, a climate action advisory committee, strategies and benchmarks for public engagement, and holding a forum about the ethics of the climate issue.

National Campus Leadership Council recently announced the six sites to host a 2016 Climate Leadership Summit as Arizona State University (April 16), Cal Poly Pomona and Claremont McKenna College (April 22-23), Florida International University (April 30), Georgia State University (April 6), and University of Wisconsin-River Falls (April 9). In partnership with Defend Our Future, the regional summits provide a platform to address energy challenges and climate change.

The college's Board of Managers recently approved $300,000 in its 2016-17 annual budget for a new carbon charge that will provide funding for campus initiatives and projects that increase energy conservation and efficiency and promote renewable energy. In the short term, the charge will be levied against the budgets of all academic and operational departments and long term, the charge will be tied to actual emissions.

As storms and flooding from El Nino threaten the San Diego region’s coastline, infrastructure and economy, the San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, a partnership managed by seven San Diego public agencies, including the University of San Diego, have received a $689,500 federal grant for coastal hazard protection and resilience. The two-year grant from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will integrate activities and provide new data on flood mapping and shoreline bluff surveys, develop additional legal, economic and scientific expertise and help cities with outreach and communication.

A climate action plan signed by university President John Anderson last week outlines the concrete steps it will take to reduce carbon emissions and attain carbon neutrality by 2040. The plan calls for cutting greenhouse emissions by 65 percent compared with the university’s 2005 baseline. The remaining 35 percent will be dealt with by buying carbon offsets.

The national football game playoff between top-ranked Clemson University and No. 2 University of Alabama was carbon neutral thanks to offsets provided by Terrapass for the competing teams' travel and accommodations and the College Football Playoff transportation fleet. Playoff Fan Central, a multi-day fan festival, was also carbon neutral.

"More and more, students want to know what universities are doing about climate change — from reducing their own carbon footprint to preparing students for the environmental challenges ahead," reports a recent USA Today article. With the sustainability challenges that lie ahead, colleges and universities, "from Ivy League universities Cornell and Yale to small private colleges like Luther and Unity," are incorporating solutions to climate change in the way they operate and in academic programs to meet industry demand for sustainability skills and knowledge.

Announced at COP21 in Paris, the university has joined Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group of investors led by Bill Gates that is committed to investing in technology that helps solve energy and climate issues, and Mission Innovation, an initiative to increase funding for research and development for early-stage clean energy innovation over the next five years.

Connecting with its strategic plan to find innovative solutions to issues of sustainability, the pledge recently signed by the university commits investors to measuring and publicly disclosing the carbon footprint of their investment portfolios on an annual basis

Over 2,000 academics from 80 countries have called on world leaders to set an upper limit of temperature rise to 1.5 C. Previous pledges ahead of the Conference on Climate Change in Paris have indicated 2.7-3 C, which the letter says will cause catastrophes far worse than any sacrifices in making reductions.

Ahead of the Conference on Climate Change, 218 U.S. universities and colleges signed a pledge to demonstrate their support for strong climate action by world leaders in Paris next month. This announcement came at a White House Summit with higher education representatives, the U.S. EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality to voice their important role in climate solutions.

Out of the recently held UC Carbon and Climate Neutrality Summit, the university system's Climate Solutions Group released a report outlining 10 solutions for addressing the challenges of climate change. Called Bending the Curve, the executive summary outlines some details about the solutions although the full report is slated for release in spring 2016 after peer review.

The 310-foot smoke stack, built in 1965, will be taken down this month after a state funded project was completed this summer that provides steam from natural gas. The university stopped burning coal in March 2015 in an effort to implement healthier methods for providing heat to campus, save money and contribute to the beautification of campus and the surrounding community.

Recognizing advanced leadership in climate change mitigation and resilience at college and university campuses, Second Nature's sixth annual Climate Leadership Awards recently named Appalachian State University as a winner in the four-year school category and Western Technical College as a winner in the two-year category.

Supporting its members and the role of higher education, AASHE recently signed onto the open letter to senior government officials of the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) that urges decision-makers to acknowledge and support the vital role that universities and colleges play in addressing climate change and resiliency.

The new Cool Campus Challenge encourages students, faculty and staff to help make its campuses and medical centers carbon neutral by 2025 by asking university members to take specific steps, outlined in weekly sustainability themes, that result in lower carbon output. Accumulated points during the competition will reveal the "Coolest UC Campus".

(U.K.): In support of the university's climate strategy, the new campaign, Edinburgh Action for the Climate, harnesses the expertise of academics researching climate-related topics to influence and inform the global climate change debate.

(U.K.): A recent analysis by Brite Green indicates more than three-quarters of England's universities are set to miss the 43 percent reduction by 2020, which was set by the Higher Education Funding Council for England in 2010. Institutions state that significant growth in institution estates and student population were taken into account when targets were set.

During a full day symposium and teach-in on Pope Francis' Encyclical on Ecology on Sept. 9, the university released their climate action plan titled A Just Future that identifies a carbon neutral goal of 2025, and includes resiliency, engagement and accountability strategies.

(U.K.): The university's new sustainability strategy calls for a 34 percent reduction in carbon emissions from a 2005 baseline to 2020 and is aiming for carbon-neutral status by 2050. After emissions gradually increased from 2005 to 2010, the university set aside a carbon reduction budget of $2 million pounds ($3.05 million) annually.

In response to ongoing debate surrounding the Environmental Protection Agency’s finalized Clean Power Plan, professors, researchers and lecturers at 29 Pennsylvania universities, as well as Harvard and Georgetown Universities, recently signed a letter emphasizing scientific research on climate change and urging lawmakers to implement a strong state plan that minimizes carbon pollution.

The sixth annual Climate Leadership Awards resulted in 19 finalists out of nearly 50 applications, seven of which are from two-year institutions and 12 are from four-year schools. The awards are a national competition among higher education institutions that are signatories of the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment.

In early April 2015, as part of its Energy Transition Plan, the university president announced that it will retire its on-campus coal plant by 2016. Although this move results in switching to natural gas, its ultimate goal is to generate 100 percent renewable energy.

The New York Times article cites the College of the Atlantic for using project-based learning to engage students outside of the classroom specifically around the issues of climate change and energy. The article says the college "takes an interdisciplinary approach to human ecology, the study of the interaction between people and their social and physical environments."

The documentary, a compilation of stories that were produced by 33 video production students at the university’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, features first-person narratives that take viewers through the Everglades, Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale beach and the Keys where community leaders describe themselves as “the canary in the coal mine” of sea level rise.

The university's voluntary program now allows participating departments offset a fee that amounts to 2 percent of total travel expenses. Those funds are then allocated to the university’s green revolving fund to be spent on efficiency upgrades on campus, which in turn lower our carbon emissions and improve our facilities.

With Charlie Rose from CBS and PBS as moderator, a panel of experts in science, politics, business, economics, and history recently shared their views during Harvard's Presidential Panel on Climate Change.

The MIT Climate Change Conversation explored whether MIT should divest its endowment as part of its response to climate change. Six prominent voices in the dialogue on climate change and energy were staged as two teams that present PRO-divestment and AGAINST-divestment arguments in a classic debate format moderated by Tony Cortese, principal of Intentional Endowments Network.

(India): In an effort to curb noise and air pollution at the institution, the university recently banned vehicles on campus every Thursday whereby all faculty, staff and students park their motorized vehicles in assigned locations and reach campus by foot.

(U.K.): Fifty academics from the university have signed an open letter calling for the institution to divest its 230 million pounds ($343.9 million) endowment fund from fossil fuels and the arms trade. The university is expected to make a decision about divestment in April.

Based on the question, how much greenhouse gas reduction is enough to prevent humans from crossing a potentially dangerous climate threshold, a student's masters project led to the development of a tool that compares a university's greenhouse gas emissions to a global emissions scenario that is most likely to keep global warming below two degrees centigrade.

(U.S.): The American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment spotlights noteworthy accomplishments from recent progress report submissions that are inspiring and progressive in their goal of attaining carbon neutrality. The highlights include projects from Creighton University, Salisbury University and University of California at Los Angeles.

The new plug called WattTime, developed through the university's technology research institute, might carry the ability to allow universities to reduce their carbon footprint by tracking the fuel source of the energy being used to charge the carts, solar, natural gas, coal, geothermal or hydroelectric, and determine the cheapest and least environmentally impactful time to charge. WattTime plugs will gather data for a couple of months in the pilot program, and communicate a charging strategy for university facilities to most efficiently charge its electric cart fleet.

A new report detailing how the university can reach carbon neutrality by 2035, including fees on carbon, was recently released by the Climate Action Acceleration Working Group with 16 recommendations and specific milestones targeting campus utility bills and university-funded travel among others.

As part of the University of California’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative, a total of five $1,500 fellowships will be awarded to both undergraduates and graduate students for projects that contribute to a reduction in campus greenhouse gas emissions, and/or educate the campus community about the importance of carbon neutrality.

(U.S.): The university's Graduate and Professional Student Organization recently passed a resolution calling for the university to establish a dollar amount allocated to renewable energy and to make the amount public, and to report associated emissions reductions each year.

At an upcoming signature event featuring faculty experts discussing climate change science, impacts and mitigation, the university's president will sign the American Colleges and Universities Presidents' Climate Commitment.

Contributing to the college's goal of using 100 percent renewable energy by 2020, the Renewable Energy Credits from a 150-kilowatt photovoltaic installation are being donated to the college and will offset approximately 8 percent of the campus' electricity consumption.

Supporting the university system's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2025, the university recently announced the creation of the President's Sustainability Student Fellowship/Internship program, whereby the Office of the President will provide $7,500 to each of the university's 10 campuses to fund student awards.

After a 126-year reliance on coal, the co-generation plant, which produces 23 percent of the university's electricity, 90 percent of its heat, and 40 percent of its cooling, now runs exclusively on natural gas.

(U.S.): In its quest for carbon neutrality by 2019, the university recently began using 1,634 acres of university-owned land for research and teaching, outdoor recreation and aesthetic value, conservation of ecosystem services and biodiversity, and timber production. Management of the forests is projected to sequester 1,500 tons of carbon dioxide annually.

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About AASHE

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education is a membership association of colleges & universities, businesses, and nonprofits who are working together to lead the sustainability transformation. Learn more about AASHE's mission.